Title: Emerald Spark (16/21)

Author: Cyclone

Feedback: Please be gentle.

Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.

Rating: Just a little bad language.

Spoilers: Anything and everything.

Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to other people. I'm just borrowing them for a while.

Summary: After Halloween, everything changes. Sequel to Blackest Night. Part one of Emerald Flame.

Author's Note: For the next few chapters, the pace is going to pick up a bit as things on a larger scale start falling into place.

Xander entered the house, his thoughts on Coach Marin. Why on Earth did he have such a foreboding feeling about what had happened? He'd have to be careful. His instincts were usually pretty reliable.

"And where have you been, young man?"

Xander jerked his head up in surprise, then relaxed when he saw Rebecca Baxter standing across the room, hands on her hips.

"Dealing with a situation, why?"

"Mrs. Summers has been worried sick."

"Why would she...?" Xander blinked, then remembered. "Oh, yeah. Oops."

"'Oops' indeed," she glowered. Beneath the stern expression, a twinkle glittered in her eyes, "So, when are you going to ask my daughter out?"

"Bwa-huh?"

"Don't tell me you haven't noticed the way she's looked at you, Alexander," she cocked a skeptical eyebrow at him.

"Um... no, I haven't?" he said, blinking in surprise.

Rebecca sighed. "Try and look at this from her point of view, Alexander," she said, moving to sit on the couch. "She's seventeen, never got out much, and her father and brother aren't what you'd call prize specimens. Now, out of the blue, this real-live superhero who's strong and brave -- and not unattractive I might add --" she paused, giving his body a frankly appraising stare that set fire to his cheeks, "swoops in like a fairy tale Prince Charming and carries her off to what might as well be a castle."

"Just one problem with that," Xander said, holding up his index finger as he tried to force the blood elsewhere... and not the other elsewhere further south it was tending toward.

"What's that?"

Xander looked away, "I really don't want to be the one to tell you this, but Tara's... um... a lesbian."

Rebecca blinked. "What?"

"Yeah," Xander nodded.

Rebecca frowned, "You know her father and brother aren't exactly stellar examples of your gender..."

"Don't!" Xander interrupted, looking back at her, eyes ablaze. "Don't give me that nature/nurture crap, Rebecca. She went to school. She could have found plenty of nice guys. But she never looked. When they were together, she and her girlfriend were two of the happiest people I ever knew. I will not deny them that. I love them both too much to do that to them. Either of them."

With that, he stormed out.

Rebecca slumped back into the couch and muttered, "Well... that could have gone better." She sighed and forced herself back to her feet. She had better call Joyce and let her know he was probably heading home now.

Xander was pensive as he paced the Summers living room like a caged tiger, trying to sort through what had happened. On the couch, Miss Calendar nursed a cup of coffee. And tried to ignore the glowing green tiger pacing along with him.

"So," she said, "what do we do now?"

He pursed his lips. She had been kidnapped, woken up strapped to a table. If it hadn't been for her magic, who knew what would have happened? She'd freed herself, stunned her captors, and fled. She found him, and they'd just returned from where they had held her... after placing a quick memory spell and tracking spell on them.

"I recognized one of them," he said. "The one with the horn-rimmed glasses; his name's Noah Butler."

"You know him?"

"I thought I did," he said grimly. "We mistook his daughter for a Slayer after... well, after. I know he's not Initiative..." He stopped and pivoted to look at her, "Dig."

"What?"

"They're looking for people with powers, you said. Who's to say they won't go after Buffy or Tara? Or Willow, for that matter? She can be a very strong witch," he elaborated. "I need to know. Everything. Who they work for, what they know, why they're doing this."

Jenny shook her head, "I can't do that with my computer, Xander."

"Tell me what you need to work your magic," he said with a smirk, "and I'll work mine. Money is no object."

He could always mine more platinum, after all.

"By the way," Jenny gave him a quizzical look, "why did you drop them off in Delaware?"

He shrugged, "Just playing a hunch."

On the side of a highway, Noah Bennet stirred. Clutching his head as he looked around, he murmured, "That could have gone better."

The Haitian nodded.

Bennet frowned, "What happened?" He remembered they were on a mission, but the rest was a fuzzy blur. "Did you wipe me?" he asked, shooting his partner a suspicious look.

The Haitian shook his head.

Bennet looked up at the sign above them. It read "Welcome to Blue Cove."

"Weren't we in California?"

He paused as another fact registered.

"And what happened to our clothes?"

Author's Note:

Just as a side note, all the events of Heroes are being pushed up by four years, so the events of the series would mostly take place in 2002 rather than 2006.

Giles found him in the library.

"Good Lord!" he blurted out in surprise at the sight before him. There were two boxes full of electronic components, three white boards with so much written on them in such small print, he would have to be right up next to it to read it. Three empty coffee pots were scattered around the room, along with a fourth one brewing in a Mr. Coffee on the counter. Stacks of notebooks and loose paper covered just about every square inch of the tables and chairs.

A haggard-looking Xander was standing in front of the white boards, studying them and adding marks and notes every few seconds, but he turned and gave Giles a bleary-eyed look.

"Oh, hey, G-man," he said with a tired wave. "What are you doing here? I thought you were locking up for the weekend."

"'The weekend'?" Giles stared at him in disbelief. "Xander, it's Monday morning. When was the last time you got any sleep?"

"Monday?" he blinked. "Fascinating. I seem to have lost a couple of days somewhere..."

"You mean you've been here since Saturday?!"

"Friday night, actually," he admitted. "Hey!" he said defensively. "You saw the shit that went down because I was out of commission." He gestured at the documents surrounding him, "This is my contingency plan."

"And you can make sense of this?" Giles asked after picking up one of the notebooks and leafing through it. The scribbles and scrawls were nearly illegible.

"Yeah," Xander nodded.

"And if we cannot?" Giles arched an eyebrow.

"I'm... working on that part," Xander said with a shrug.

"Not like this, you're not," the Watcher said acidly. "And what about Mrs. Summers? She must be worried sick!"

Xander snorted, "No one's ever paid attention to me before, and she's overlooked Buffy going out on nightly patrol for two years running. What makes you think she'd even notice? I love that woman, but she's not exactly the most observant person in the world."

"How about the fact that she almost filed a missing persons report?! Or that Buffy's been combing the graveyards and warehouse district for you for the past two days?!" Giles practically exploded.

"She... what?" Xander blinked in bewilderment. That pause was all it took for the exhaustion to finally catch up.

His eyes rolled up, and he collapsed.

"OhmyGod,isheallright?!" a redheaded blur demanded as it rushed into the hospital room.

"He's fine, just exhausted," the doctor said. He shot Mrs. Summers a withering look, "Look, whatever he was working on, it can't be that important. He's been running on nothing but caffeine and adrenaline for at least half a day. He needs at least a week's bed rest."

Buffy cracked her knuckles. "Oh, he'll get it, all right," she said with a look of fierce determination on her face. The doctor almost chuckled.

"Hey, B," Faith interjected, "don't break anything, mm'kay?" She then added sensuously, "I'd kind of like to have all his body parts intact when he's all rested up. I've got plans for 'em."

"Faith!" Willow screeched.

"Okay, ew," Buffy said. "That was way more than I needed to know."

Faith smirked as she shrugged, "Hey, just sayin', ya know? Don't break it if you ain't gonna buy it. Or even take it out for a test drive."

"Faith!" Willow screeched again.

"Faith, you know I can hear you, right?"

The doctor stared at his patient. The young man shouldn't even be capable of dreaming, let alone waking up!

"Hey, stud," Faith grinned. "How's tricks?"

"For kids," Xander deadpanned, then sighed and gave up trying to sit back up. It wasn't worth the effort to deal with this.

"Where are you going?" Joyce Summers asked acidly. As far as she was concerned, he was still grounded, with exceptions only for saving the world, for that stunt he'd pulled last week. She still had trouble wrapping her head around that.

"I have some things I need to check into off-planet," Xander replied. He'd already made arrangements, including topping off the charge in Faith's power ring, as he would be taking the power battery with him. He only had one more stop left to make.

"You're grounded, remember?"

He looked at her, "One of those things I need to check into has the ability to wipe out all life in the galaxy. I think this counts as world save-age."

Joyce scowled, "When will you be back?"

"Dunno exactly," he shrugged. "A week, maybe two. Three on the outside."

"What about school?"

"What about school?"

"You can't just leave for a week or two!" she snapped, exasperated. "You'll get expelled!"

"Somehow, I doubt that," Xander replied cryptically, "but even if I did, so what? That'd probably help, actually. Saving the world's a full-time job. Armageddon's not going to wait for me to finish my homework."

"You're throwing your life away!"

"My life?" he repeated. "Mrs. Summers, I hunt vampires and demons. I'll be fighting vampires and demons until my dying day. What will I need a high school diploma for? I've already been through high school, remember?"

"Does hunting vampires and demons pay the bills?" she retorted, crossing her arms skeptically.

"Sometimes, it can," he shrugged, "but mostly, it's the raw platinum I mine asteroids for that pays the bills. With a few hours' work, I produced enough to make a down payment on that house I got for the Baxters. I've already stockpiled enough to run comfortably on for the rest of my life if I had to."

"That's not the point! What if... what if you want to retire one day?"

Xander shook his head and stepped out the door, "I'm never gonna live that long."

He decided not to give her the opportunity to respond and, after discreetly checking for observers with the ring, took to the skies. Moments later, he was at the home he had purchased for the Baxters and Faith. Rebecca was in the front yard, doing something in her garden.

"Hi, there," he said, dropping down behind her.

She turned, "Hello, Xander."

"I'll be off-planet for a while," he said, pulling out a small ring box. "Here."

"What...?" she accepted it and opened it, eyes widening at the contents. She looked up, "This is..."

"When she's ready," he interrupted her. "Not before."

And then, he left.

Surrounded only by a faint green glow, Xander approached the planet cautiously. It was the center of a massive, militant, nearly galaxy-wide religion created by the so-called gods they worshipped; it was going to be a tough nut to crack. But it was also the location of a galactic-scale Genesis device. He had to find out how likely it was that they would find it.

As he approached the planet's lunar orbit, a wave of disorientation washed over him. The first thing he noticed was gravity as he stumbled and nearly fell over. "What the...?" Xander muttered, looking around... then spun, his power ring up and ready to blast whatever was creeping up behind him.

It was a floating metallic ball with a large eye-like blue light facing him. It approached and lowered itself to about waist level, at which point, a bluish-purple figure -- humanoid, female, about a foot tall -- appeared from an aperture on top.

"Hello," came a pleasant female voice. "I am Cortana, Monitor of Installation Zero. Welcome home, Sentinel."

Author's Postscript:

Yes, I rewrote her. No, there's no Master Chief John 117 (yet). Heck, there isn't even a UNSC (well, no United Nations Space Command, anyway...), nor is there a Spartan II program.